


But I am a writer

by sternenschnuppendrachenschicksal



Category: Hellboy (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Inspired by Poetry, Inspired by Richard Siken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-16 05:37:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15430137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternenschnuppendrachenschicksal/pseuds/sternenschnuppendrachenschicksal
Summary: "I'll rewrite this whole life and this time there'll be so much love, you won't be able to see beyond it."-Backwards by Warsan ShireLiz learns the story of Persephone.





	But I am a writer

Inspired by this prompt: Any, any, why winter comes (from [here](https://caramelsilver.livejournal.com/151620.html?thread=6140996#t6140996)) i also posted a first draft of this there.

\--

Save (save for others, more then save for herself) inside the Bureau - she wiggles her toes on the white sheets and tries to think about Princess in towers (not dragons, she had enough of fire and destruction, screaming, and fear for more then a life time), think about pretty pink dress specialy fitted by fairy good mothers, of soft and sweet, of being protected and loved, she is to old for this kind of fancies of cause, but the only other thing in her cell are the school books they gave her, and no one is around, not even to stick needles in her arm or do any kind other kind of tests, and if it spirals into her thinking of her mother and grandmother, her father, and all the foster families she went through – well she surely deserves the guilt that nips at her stomach like flames (she should not miss anyone like she does, she should be glad to be alone, if there is no one else around it means there is no one to burn when (not if, it is always just a question of when) she lose it the next time).  
  
_For a while I thought I was the dragon_  
_I guess I can tell you that now._  
_And, for a while, I thought I was the princess,_  
_cotton candy pink,_  
_sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,_  
_young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you_  
_with confidence_

Hellboy is the first to tell them to her, the stories about other gods, older then the one her grandma believed in, he drops them into the space on the bed between them: her, the back against the wall, the knees pulled in, and him, too big for the small room, strong, stronger than any human. (He let her win at arm wrestling, and she is almost sure he knows she knows.) But he has new bruises and scars almost everytime he visit, and it scares her, each one has a story, and they are all funny if for nothing else then for his deadpan voice and face “This one? Oh I fell down some stairs, nothing major, well beside the half-bird-half-mammal-full-ugly beast falling on top of me, and maybe the spikes that impailed me where I landed, nothing to worry about really. You should see the other guy – wait bad idea, that was definitly not pg and Dad is going to kill me if you get nightmares again". He is not invulnerable, still he comes, sits at her bed, finds sweets and tacky postcards in his enormous pockets and never seems afraid of her.

The sound of the door opening breaks her out of her thoughs, "Fucking Persephone," Hellboy says, instead of a greeting, there are snowflakes on his trench coat even through it´s early May, melting fast now that he stepped into the small room, still heated up by her last break down, "sorry kid, we are a little understaffed in the moment".

The Professor promised her the last time to gift her a diary, so she could stop scribbling in the corners of the school books, nightmare eyes and unicorns and hangman games. Hellboy made her promise to read to him if she ever wrote a story about mutated killer dogs because that were some of his favorite in the world. The book, leather bound and heavy and soon burned in all corners, would arive a week later, the story she was about to hear would be one of the first she writes down there, in the roundabout way that Hellboy had when he told stories, full of the kind of humor that Liz, 12 year old mind could not help but love despite the fact that her grandmother had written her a note to excuse her from certain biology lessons back then.  
  
"So you what kind of monster is a Persephone?" She ask and he grins, "Oh you gonna love this story."  
  
_I’m not the dragon._  
_I’m not the princess either._  
_Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down._

Richard Sikens - Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out


End file.
